Attendance Down on Boycott Day : School Officials Are Unsure If Drop Is Related to Church

Student absences at San Diego city schools Tuesday were up sharply from Tuesday last week, but school officials and Roman Catholic leaders said they could not determine whether a one-day boycott sanctioned by Bishop Leo T. Maher was the reason.

In letters distributed to congregations in the diocese’s 98 churches Sunday, Maher endorsed a one-day boycott of city high schools Tuesday to protest a proposal for a school-based health clinic that would distribute contraceptives and handle routine student health needs.

School officials released figures showing that 7,634 students were absent from city schools Tuesday, 1,499 more than the 6,135 who missed school on Tuesday last week. The statistics were based on reports from 79% of the city’s elementary schools and 93% of the high schools. Total enrollment in the district is about 109,000.

But administrators said that the three-day Memorial Day weekend, a flu outbreak at one school, the boycott or other unknown factors may have been responsible for the 24% jump in absences over last week.

“It would be real hard for us to ascertain how much of that was due to the boycott,” said Richard Knott, financial accounting director for the school system. Schools normally expect higher absence rates after three-day weekends as students stretch the holiday for another day, Knott said.

He said the school system keeps no districtwide record of attendance each day, and has never before calculated the absentee rate after a three-day weekend.

Father Roger Lechner, who helped a group of Mira Mesa parents organize the boycott, agreed that no conclusions could be drawn from the statistics. Father Stephen McCall, spokesman for Maher, concurred.

“I’d have to agree with (school administrators),” Lechner said. “I couldn’t say one way or another.” Lechner said he will begin canvassing the 300 San Diego religious groups asked to join the boycott and may release a figure on their participation later this week.

Meanwhile, one of eight candidates in next week’s election for a Board of Education seat capitalized on the boycott by organizing a demonstration before Tuesday afternoon’s school board meeting.

About 120 people organized by candidate Steve Vaus linked hands in front of the Education Center to protest the health clinics. Among them were about a dozen youngsters from St. Stephen’s Church of God in Christ in Southeast San Diego, who responded to their pastor’s call to boycott school and demonstrate against the clinics.

“I feel that they shouldn’t put the clinics in schools,” said Kenneth Hawkins, a Lincoln High School 10th-grader. “I feel that’s prying into the family.”

Llewellyn Willis, a 10th-grader at Mt. Miguel High School in the Grossmont Union High School District, said he skipped school to support the effort even though his school is outside the San Diego Unified School District.

“We feel we should not have those clinics on our campus, because that’s like telling us teen-agers to have premarital sex,” he said.

Lechner called the effort to organize a boycott a success because it has “promoted a positive jelling together of Christian bodies and organizations, and others--non-Christians--who want to promote positive Christian values in the schools.”

Bertha Pendleton, special assistant to school Supt. Thomas Payzant, said she did not know whether to call the boycott a success or failure. “I hope it’s a failure,” she said, “because I hope those kids are in school.”

As envisioned by school health officials, the clinic--proposed last fall as a way to offer medical care to some teen-agers--would be on a high school campus, most likely in a low-income neighborhood. Medical personnel at the privately funded facility would provide physical examinations, immunizations and psychological counseling. They would also dispense contraceptives and offer pregnancy counseling.

A 30-member task force, appointed by the school board in March after the proposal provoked widespread public outcry, is studying the issue. It is to make a recommendation to the trustees July 1.